I sort of saw it coming, but still wanted to try and see how bad it actually gets. In my opinion making a game in only one hour while an impressive challenge is not very appropriate for a jam.

When I usually participate in a jam I use the first hour to make a concept and plan for my game. What gameplay I want, what graphics I will use, how much time it will take and so on. I think planning is a very important step for every game and due to the nature of this jam it kind of falls flat. Now today I was sort of lucky, since the theme literally said do whatever you want (so I turned a joke game idea into a game), but if we had a high concept theme I would have wasted a lot of the allotted time gathering ideas and planing a game that I could make in something like 30 minutes (super impossible for me, I can't type that fast let alone think).

Another way of going about the jam would have been to have all prewritten code ready and simply adjusting the graphics and story or whatever to the theme. This imo is possible, but sort of counter productive. Jams are supposed to be a place where you try new things to create something out of the box. This method however would result with you staying in your comfort zone and basically churning out asset flips akin to following the latest gaming trend (not a character trait I would like to see in my cojammers).

I feel like this jam has a cursed problem. You simply cannot combine speed and originality. You ether get "rebranded" and "reskinned" games or you get halfbaked mutants and dnfs. I don't see a solution to this, which is why I probably won't participate again.

I would like to hear your thoughts though. Maybe I am just dumb and don't get it or lack the technical finesse. idk